An Evening at the Opera

So I went to the Opera last night. As a great lover of theatre, and musical theatre at that, I was atwitter with anticipation. The opera was Puccini's "Madama Butterfly," first staged in the early 20th century. It tells the story of a callous American sailor who marries a young Japenese girl who is as faithful as she is beautiful, and then abandons her. I won't go into the details, but its a very tragic story and I'm usually a sucker for tragedy. Its one of the reasons I love studying classics so much. There's just such a poetry to it; as Fraser would say, its epic. So I fully expected a real gut-wrencher.
But opera, it seems, is not for me. As a musician, I can fully appreciate the work and technique and general difficulty of what those singers are doing. They're singing difficult music without amplification mostly at the top of their respective ranges and they're doing laying down...or sitting...or some other position that is not condusive to singing powerfully. So I can fully appreciate that. But damn, is it too much to ask to keep the facial contortions to a minimum?
I suppose so. Given what I just said about the difficulty of performing opera, I suppose I should've just shut up and enjoyed the musical marvel that was in front of me. But all I could think about were the stupid faces the musicians were making. So much so, that it actually distracted me from the story. I just couldn't get worked up about the suffering of someone who looked like a hungry goldfish.
It was definitely fun to get dressed up and go out though. There's so little opportunity to do that in Tucson, so it was fun. I loved wearing my pearls and my fancy new jacket. And the people watching was awesome. Let me just say, feathers and old ladies should not go together.
So, while the evening as a whole was enjoyable, I don't think I'll be attending the opera again any time soon.